Management of water scarcity: between the negotiated application of the "drought" decree and the emergence of local arrangements

Abstract

On the basis of a national survey with local administration of water affairs and three monographs, this paper questions the implementation of the 1992 drought statutory order in the course of recent events (2003, 2005, 2006), and identifies actors involved. Administration, with the prefect in a central position, holds the main role. Implementation of drought management processes is raising some practical concerns: partition of counties in warning areas, gathering of information on availability of water, definition of thresholds activating the crisis status. Water scarcity management happens to follow a pattern of conflicting cooperation. Each stakeholder involved has a double aim: to get his own objectives taken into account, while giving them a general scope so they gain legitimacy. Locally elected people, who are otherwise rather absent, might endorse a key role in solving this conflict between a search for generality and a necessary adaptation to very local contexts.